My Way or the Highway
by Lyrical Soliloquy
Summary: Written for The Refuge's Lazy Days of Summer Secret Slash Exchange. Race drags Skittery into going on a road trip. Skittery/Race slash. One-shot.


**My Way or the Highway**

**Skittery threw his shoulder against the heavy door, pushing out into the warm summer evening. His arms were cramping, tired of holding the heavy schoolbooks. **_**This year was waaay too long to be enjoyable, **_**he thought. **

**He had barely taken three steps across the cobblestoned courtyard before his best friend, roommate, and boyfriend Racetrack bounded up to him and clapped him hard between his shoulder blades. Skittery gasped and nearly fell flat on his face. Race tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle his snort of amusement. "All right, there, Skitts?"**

**Skittery shook his hair out of his eyes and nodded stiffly. Race grinned, refusing to have his enthusiasm squashed by Skittery's lack thereof. "Hey, lighten up, will ya? It's summer!" Race laughed out loud and put his hands into the universal air-guitar position. "Schooool's out for summa'!" he howled, yelling more than singing. "Schooooooool's out foreva'!" Skittery scowled and stalked away. Race, his eyes closed with concentration on his song as he fell to his knees, rocking out to his Alice Cooper, didn't notice until Skittery was nearly to his car. "Hey!" Race called, scrambling to his feet again and leaving the song unfinished, "Wait up; you're my ride!"**

**Skittery paused for a moment, threw a venomous glare over his shoulder, and then continued. His roommate's Converse clattered loudly against the cobblestones. Race was still grinning when he slowed. "Guess what?" he said, trying to throw his arm around Skittery's shoulders. He didn't manage, being much shorter than his friend, and ended up smacking Skittery in the face. "Whoops," he laughed. When Skittery didn't answer, Race ran in front of him to slow him up and said, "Hey, glum and dumb, I asked you to guess what!"**

"**Fine! What, Race? What do you want?" Skittery stopped dead, a dangerous look in his eyes. **

**Race's grin melted off of his face. "Well, geez, Skitts. If you say it like that, I don't wanna tell you."**

**Skittery heaved a calming breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he said, "Sorry. It's been a long day. Anyway, what?"**

"**That's more like it, bud! I have two words for ya: ROAD TRIP!"**

**As much as he wanted to be as excited as his roommate was, Skittery just couldn't bring himself to fake enthusiasm for a road trip. He was exhausted; a double-major in Chemical Engineering and Architecture was stretching him to the end of his rope. All Skittery wanted to do was to go back to his dorm room and sleep for three days. But he managed a small smile and raised his right fist in half-hearted interest.**

**Race didn't seem to notice, or care, about Skittery's grudging responses to his plan. "I knew you'd like it! We're leaving tomorrow morning with Blink and Specs. David might come too. Oh, and we're taking your car."**

**Skittery blinked slowly. Semi-angry excuses as to why he couldn't go, why they couldn't use his car, and how much work he had to do chased each other around his head, each worse than the last. As the seconds stretched longer and longer, Race's happy smile sagged. Finally, Race quietly asked, "Skitts? Skittery? If… if you don't want to go, I'll understand. Hey, when we get home I'll call Blink and Specs and we can reschedule, or cancel, or we could…"**

**By this time Skittery had mostly pulled himself together. He pushed his excuses away and pasted a false smile on his face. "Hey, hey, Race. Listen, I've just had a long year. Maybe," he almost couldn't bring himself to say it, but forced it out anyway, "Maybe an escape is just what I need."**

**Race shouted with joy and grabbed Skittery around the middle, lifting the skinny college student into the air. Race may have been short, but he was quite strong. "Who, Race. Hey, put me down, man! I'm gonna hurl!" Skittery's breath huffed out of him as his feet hit the ground and he almost fell for the second time in the past five minutes.**

**Meanwhile, Race had danced his way over to Skittery's car and opened the passenger door. He got in, still dancing, and the small Geo Metro shook with his movements. Skittery stared after him for a moment, then lifted his hand and hit himself, hard, on the forehead. **_**Why why why why why did I do that? Why? **_**Mentally repeating the slapping motion, Skittery dragged himself to the driver's side door and opened it. **

"**Oh, uh, Race?" Skittery asked, putting his books in the back seat. "Um, how are five college students going to fit in this? We barely fit."**

**Race shrugged, still cabbage-patching. "I don't know. You're the only one with a car, though. Blink can't drive, obviously. Specs' car is a rotting piece of scrap metal, and David, well, you know what David's like. 'Fight Global Warming, everybody!'" Race rolled his eyes.**

"**Yeah. But still, is this really the best option? Why don't we rent a bus or something?" Skittery turned the key, and the little Metro wheezed and puffed before finally starting up. "I don't think we can make it with this."**

"**A bus? Where do you think we're going, Skitts? China?" Race stopped dancing to stare at him.**

"**Well, I don't know! You never told me where we're going!" Skittery said in exasperation.**

"**New York. Just a day's drive from here. I wanna go see the Bridge again. Besides, we like New York, remember?" Race grinned slyly at Skittery.**

**Skittery couldn't fault him there. Back when he and Race were just Juniors in high school, they had met at the Natural History museum for a school field trip. There they had become fast friends, for reasons that still baffled Skittery when he thought about it. It was also there that Skittery had realized that man-bodies were much more sexy to him than females. Race had helped him a lot in that department.**

"**Yeah, that's true, I suppose," grumbled Skittery. Race's grin turned smug as he settled into the worn seat. "So, when are we leaving, again?"**

"**Eight o'clock tomorrow morning."**

"**Dammit, Race!"**

**As it turns out, they did not leave at eight o'clock the next morning. Blink was late, claiming that he had forgotten where his eye patch was and that he couldn't have left without it. David came with Specs, ranting about how they had just released enough CO2 into the atmosphere to get rid of three feet of the ozone layer. Specs looked pained, and was rubbing his temple with one hand. The second they walked in the door, Specs turned to Race and muttered, "If I were a serial killer, David would be the first to die."**

**Race stifled his laughter with the back of his hand and answered, "I can't blame you for that, bud."**

**Skittery didn't wake up until 7:45, and so scrambled in and out of the shower, the kitchen, and his bedroom in record time, scooping up money, clothing, toothbrush, and food. He burst into the front room at 8:15, combing his hair with his fingers. Race, Specs, Blink sat on the saggy couch, watching David pace around the room talking about the evils of smog. All three of the couch-sitters looked ready to either laugh or cry, depending on the angle that you viewed them. Blink leaned over Specs to whisper "Why did you invite him?" to Race. Race shrugged, and seemed close to laughter than the others.**

**Just then, Specs noticed Skittery standing in the doorway. "Excellent, you're up! Time to go!"**

**Skittery wanted to object, but Race and Blink sprang up and grabbed his arms to haul him away. They dumped him into the backseat, and Blink came in next to him. "Sorry," he whispered as he clipped in his seatbelt, "David's sitting back here, too."**

**Once Race and Specs were installed in the front, and David had joined Skittery and Blink in the back, they were off. Specs was driving, and David hadn't stopped talking about CO2 emissions.**

**Three hours into the ride, Skittery was nearly insane. Specs had almost run them off the road in an attempt to avoid a squirrel, Blink's head was resting on Skittery's shoulder, snores nearly deafening him and drool soaking into his shirt, and David had moved from the depleted ozone to saving the polar bears.**

**Race, though, had managed to keep his spirits as high as ever. He turned around in his seat, poked Blink's leg to wake him up ("Wha'? I didn't know it was illegal!"), and said, "You know what we need? Music."**

**That was all well and good, except for the fact that Skittery's Metro had no radio or CD player. Race knew this perfectly well, and he had been pestering Skittery for months to get one installed. **

**But Blink, Specs, and even David agreed. "What kind of music, Race?" Blink asked, rubbing sleep from his good eye.**

**Race grinned in excitement, though it looked almost malicious to Skittery. "Well, there are five of us."**

**Blink frowned, confused. "Yeah… so?"**

**Race's grin widened. "Two words, guys: boy band."**

**The next half-hour was spent singing Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and New Kids on the Block songs at the tops of their lungs. From there they moved on to Aerosmith, AC/DC, The Who, Van Halen, and, for a change of pace, Billy Joel. Even Skittery began to enjoy himself, and, though he hated to admit it, glad to have agreed to go. Although the fact that David had finally shut up about the environment, and that Blink was fully awake, probably had something to do with his good mood.**

**Soon Specs pulled over at a rest stop. Everyone got out to move around a little, and Skittery agreed to take over the driving. Specs dived into the back, and Race smiled at him when Skittery got in the front. Everyone chatted about their various hobbies and/or majors; Blink was Statistics and David was Environmental Science. Race and Specs got into a heated debate about whether community college counted or not.**

**A couple of hours later, everyone but Race and Skittery was asleep. Race clutched Skittery's hand tightly in his own, and, for once, he wasn't smiling. "Skitts?" he asked quietly, not wanting to wake the others. "I've been thinking… what's gonna happen? With us, I mean."**

**Skittery looked over at him. "I don't know what you mean, Race. Everything's good now, you know?"**

"**Yeah, but, I… I wanna, you know… Well, you won't be in college forever, and…"**

**Skittery didn't make him go on. He understood Race's concern. "I'll always want to be with you, Race. I mean it. Once I'm done, nothing will change. We'll be free to go anywhere and do anything that we want. We could even move back to New York."**

**Race half-smiled. "I'd like that."**

"**Me, too."**

**They sat in silence, holding hands, until Specs awoke with a purposely loud yawn. Skittery broke his hold on Race's hand and reluctantly put his own back on the steering wheel. Soon, the others were awake as well.**

"**How about some more music, fellas!" Race said, swiveling around in his seat to look at Blink, Specs, and David. "What will it be this time?"**

**They cycled through Bon Jovi, The Ramones, and Spinal Tap before Race suggested Frank Sinatra. He could sing quite well when he wanted to, and this was one of those times. His 'My Way' nearly echoed through the small Metro's interior as everyone else listened quietly. When he was finished, Skittery said, "That was great, Race. Really great."**

"**You'd better have liked it. You know why?" Race smiled in anticipation.**

**Skittery winced inwardly, expecting one of Race's bad jokes. He always smiled like that before a bad joke. "I don't know, Race, why?"**

"**Because it's 'My Way' or the highway!"**

**Skittery saw no point in trying to suppress his laughter.**


End file.
